


For A Dollar and Six Cents More

by CaptainJZH



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Retail, Gen, Written for a Class, tho there's no prime universe for it to be an AU of lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:42:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26443618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainJZH/pseuds/CaptainJZH
Summary: Sam is unexpectedly called in for his job at Dollar Family, and to make matters worse, his boss leaves for an extended lunch break. What else could go wrong?





	For A Dollar and Six Cents More

Sam laid in bed, enjoying his lazy Saturday morning. It was his first day off in ages, and he was enjoying it by getting some much needed rest and relaxation. The sound of a text chime interrupted all that. “Sam, are you busy tonight?” Sam’s boss asked him. That was his first mistake. For Sam’s brain rewrote the phrase as “Are you available to work?” and Sam, without thinking, answered “Yes.” Fifteen minutes later he was pulling up to Dollar Family, the establishment at which he made a measly eight dollars an hour, a whopping 75 cents more than his previous job. Still, he needed the money over winter break, and this was as good a job as any entry-level retail position. Which wasn’t saying much.

“Sam!” his boss, Jerry, exclaimed. “What are you doing here? I thought you said you were busy!” Sam went through the text exchange in his head, realizing his error. He quickly explained the misunderstanding, silently cursing his boss’s name in his head. He didn’t have to work today. He could have just stayed in bed, and Jerry would have been none the wiser. But now, he was  _ obligated  _ to stay; they were short-handed even with him there, he couldn’t just leave. Besides, he justified to himself, he needed the money.

And today, Jerry apparently decided to take an extended lunch break, leaving Sam at the register. Alone. 

“Hello, how are you?” he asked customer after customer, eventually not even considering the meaning of the words. “I’m good, thank you,” he recited, even when the customer did not answer with “I’m good, how are you?” The incongruence of the sentences didn’t even register in the customer’s mind, further cementing the pointlessness of such phrases. Did it even matter how he was doing? Did it matter how the customer was doing? Did anything matter?

There were positives, however. Sometimes a customer would catch onto the dull tone in his voice, and remark “Well it sure doesn’t sound like you’re good,” earning a self-deprecating laugh before he moved onto the next customer. There were also the regular customers, who showed up every day, and had worked their way into Sam’s heart: The elderly man who came each night on the bus from the assisted living center, the guy with a “Retired Hustler” hat, the depressed woman who carried all of her money in an envelope and so on. Then there were the kids. He always liked it when kids showed up, trying to buy stuff on their own. And boy, did he have fun explaining  _ sales tax  _ to the youngins. It was less fun, however, when there was a long line of adult patrons that was steadily getting longer.

Tonight, a group of boys, no more than ten years old, had raided the hardware section for tools, and Sam looked at them with sheer skepticism up to the moment their $1.06 hacksaw passed over the scanner. A loud warning flashed on the screen, reading “MUST BE EIGHTEEN YEARS OR OLDER TO PURCHASE.” Sam immediately cancelled the warning, giving the kids a stern look. “Can I see some ID?” he asked the boys, knowing for a fact that whatever they produced wouldn’t be enough. The boys fled the scene immediately, leaving Sam to void the purchase.

A few customers later and the store was empty again, and Sam was back to organizing the shelves. His boss still wasn’t back yet. He wished he could sit down, but Dollar Family had eyes everywhere, and nobody would dare sit down when it wasn’t their allotted ten-minute break. He occupied the lull by filling up the candy display with fresh bars of chocolate, being quite meticulous about it, too. His candy-organizing was interrupted by the sound of a very distressed woman barging into the store, whom he recognized from the line of customers earlier.

“Excuse me,” the woman asked, “Are you the  _ only  _ person working here?”

“Uh…” Sam trailed off, unable to come up with a response quick enough.

“Because I bought  _ this  _ and it doesn’t fit.” She held up a red steering wheel cover, shoving it in Sam’s face. “It said it would fit, and I want my money back.”

“Ma’am,” Sam said, putting on his best “customer service” voice, “I’m afraid we only do exchanges.” He didn’t have the temperment to inform her that, no, there was nothing on the packaging that said the cover would fit her specific steering wheel.

“Nope,” the woman said, shaking her head. “I shop here  _ way  _ too often, I just want my $1.06.”

“Ma’am, the store policy—”

“Can I speak to your manager?”

“I’m afraid the manager is out at the moment, ma’am.”

“Well then, can you  _ maybe  _ try fitting the thing on yo’self?”

“And then you won’t want a refund anymore?”

“Well I dunno,  _ Sherlock,  _ what do you figure?”

Sam shrugged. “Sure, why not?” he said, embarking out to the woman’s car and breathing in the cold December air. As they approached the woman’s car — sitting idle in the parking lot of the Pondwater Plaza Strip Mall — the woman began frantically searching her pockets for her keys. When they reached the car window, she realized what she had done. Her keys were sitting  _ inside _ the locked automobile, absently left inside during her fit of Refund Rage. The woman spent the next hour angrily on the phone with her friend, then her roommate and then her superintendent, trying to get one of them to get her backup keys from her apartment, before storming off in a huff.

The worst came at 8:50pm, only ten minutes until closing time, when Jerry was  _ still _ not back from his “lunch” break and a line was forming at the register, with each customer buying at least twenty items. One customer even had the audacity to buy ten pounds worth of glassware, which store policy dictated all had to be individually wrapped in newspaper. The line grew longer and longer. Sam’s feet were tired. Nine o’clock drew closer and closer. They were running out of bags. The customers were getting upset. Children were complaining. People were taking things off the shelves and putting them in other places. A glass broke. The customer demanded a new one. That was the last one. The door swung open. Sam craned his head upwards, hoping that Jerry was back. He wasn’t.

“Everybody get down, this is a robbery!” the man entering the store shouted, a ski mask covering his face.

_ “SIR!”  _ Sam hollered at the top of his lungs. “You are going to have to wait in line  _ just like everybody else!”  _

The customers in line, however, abandoned said line in favor of running out of the store in sheer panic. The robber pushed through the stampede, pulling out a gun and aiming it at Sam. But Sam did not care. 

“Sir, if this is supposed to be a threat, I don’t get  _ paid enough _ to respond to threats,” Sam said, utterly exasperated.

“Open that register and gimme the money or else I’ll—” the robber tried to say before Sam interrupted him.

“Sir, I can’t open the register unless a  _ transaction is made,” _ Sam said, as if he was speaking to an old man asking for a dollar in quarters without buying anything.

“Then I’ll have a dumb candy bar! I just want my  _ money!” _ the robber impatiently said, ripping a Hershey Bar out from the carefully-constructed candy display. This was probably what made something in Sam’s mind snap. He had spent so much time putting the candy on the shelf in an aesthetically-pleasing manner, and this guy thought he could just destroy it like that?

The robber tried to run the bar of processed chocolate over the register, but tonight the Point-of-Sale system decided to take one of its inconvenient vacations and spend the next hour updating the servers. Which meant Sam couldn’t clock out and end his shift like he so desperately wanted to do.

“Whoops!” Sam shouted, bitter sarcasm flowing from his lips. “Looks like the system’s down! No more purchasing tonight! No opening this register! Zip. Zero. Nadda. But if you still want something from this puny little establishment, then why not take some  _ more  _ candy bars?!” Sam grabbed a whole stack of Mr. Goodbars and threw them at the robber. “Have some M&Ms! Twizzlers! Those weird hard candies nobody likes!” He started tearing the potato chip bags from the shelves, throwing them at the robber as well. “Have anything! Everything! I don’t care! It’s all just a  _ dollar  _ so it’s not a fucking loss on my part!”

The robber quietly put his gun away and slowly backed out of the store, as Sam continued his tirade against the discount merchandise that surrounded him, ripping everything from the shelves and throwing them to the floor. “And how about these fucking cheap toys that parents get so their kids shut the Hell up! And these at-home pregnancy tests! And these greeting cards! And the 99-cent frozen broccoli! Why don’t you just  _ take it all,  _ and  _ burn it!”  _ he shouted, stomping on a case of shrimp-flavored Instanoodles.

He looked up, snapping out of his mental episode. Jerry was standing there, carrying a balloon and a stuffed animal while he drank a large soda cup labeled “FUN FAIR.” Sam paused for about ten, long seconds before finally speaking.

“...I can explain.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
